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“All right, then, a kilocred—not a micro more. Take it or leave it.”

The Professor looked displeased, opened his mouth to bargain Lando up, examined the determined expression on the gambler’s face, and nodded. “A kilo, then. I haven’t any use for the thing in any event, it was attempting to help me break into the Sharu ruins, and I—’ ”

“Will you have a card, Supervisor Fori?” Lando interrupted.

“I’m out; this game’s gotten too rich for me, and I’m on shift in fifteen minutes.” Much the same was true for Arun Feb. They sat through the hand, enjoying watching somebody else lose for once.

Osuno Whett, however, bet heavily with his borrowed thousand, perhaps in an attempt to tap the gambler out. He was assisted in this by Constable Phuna. The money on the table grew and grew as Lando met their every raise, increasing the stakes himself. He wanted the game over with, one way or the other.

He’d dealt himself a Two of Sabres and a Four of Coins, taking an additional card after his two opponents had accepted them. Abruptly, the Four became a Three of Flasks, and his extra, which had been a Nine of Staves, transformed itself into the Idiot.

“Sabacc!” Lando cried in double triumph. To judge from the money on the table before him, and the lack of it in front of Whett and Phuna, that was the game. “Where can I pick up that droid, Ottdefa? I’m going to put it to work immediately as a naviga—”

“On Rafa IV, Captain. I left it in the custody of a storage-locker company, intending to sell it there or send for it—now, please don’t get angry! I have here the title and an official tax assessment indicating its true value. You may take these with you, or use them to get a fair price for the robot here!”

Lando had risen, violence flitting briefly—very briefly— through his mind. That he had been gulled like any amateur was his first coherent thought. That he had a small but powerful pistol secreted beneath his decorative cummerbund was his second. That he could wind up dead, or in jail, on this sweltering fistful of slag was his third.

There wasn’t time for a fourth.

“Hold on there, son!” the Constable said, seizing Lando’s arm. “No need for any uproar. We’re all friends here.” He pointed with his free hand to the papers Whett had preferred. “The Ottdefa here can post bond to you in the full amount of—say, what’s this?”

Lando felt something small, round, and cool thrust up beneath his embroidered sleeve. He glanced down just as Phuna was pretending to remove it, and groaned. It was a flat, smooth-cornered disk a centimeter thick, perhaps four centimeters in diameter. He knew precisely what it was, although he’d never owned one in his life.

“A cheater!” the indignant Constable exclaimed. “He had a cheater all the time! He could change the faces of the cards to suit him any time he wanted! No wonder—”

With a feral snarl, Osuna Whett took advantage of the asteriod’s minimal gravity, launching himself across the table at Lando. Just as his skinny frame was halfway to its target, a dirty denym jacket flopped over his head, followed by a knobbly set of knuckles belonging to Arun Feb’s right hand. There was a dull thump of contact and a muffled squeak from the anthropologist.

“Get out of here, kid!” Feb shouted. “I saw Phuna plant the cheater on you!”

The lawman whirled on Feb, fist upraised. Apparently Vett Fori trusted her assistant’s judgment—and knew how to maneuver in the absence of gravitic pull. She snatched up the nearest solid object—which happened to be the anthropologist’s already battered head—and dashed it sideways against the startled cranium of the police officer. Eyes crossed, he collapsed, drifting slowly to the floor. Still holding Whett by the occipital region, Fori pried the wad of official-looking papers from the unconscious scientist’s fingers.

“Take these and get your ship out of the Oseon, Lando. I’ll talk sense with Phuna when he comes around. He’s crooked, but he isn’t crazy. Besides, in theory, he works for me.”

It wasn’t the first rapid exit Lando had made in his brief but eventful career.